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The 2 college students who fell in love over Snapchat promise they weren’t paid

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love story 4x3

A pair of University of Wisconsin-Madison students who took their campus Snapchat story by storm Thursday night turned into internet stars by Monday. 

And while the more cynical among us may have thought that it was a viral marketing stunt, according to New York Magazine's Select All, their modern-day fairy tale was real.

It all started when "Mystery Girl" posted a video in which she proclaimed her love for a stranger in a Vikings jersey, enter, "Vikings Fan." The pair exchanged snaps on the public campus story several times in an attempt to meet up while the entire campus watched until, finally, they did.

Screen Shot 2016 05 03 at 3.04.14 PM

Select All reporter Madison Malone Kircher tracked down the pair— whose real names are actually Abby and Reed — and it turns out, they're just regular college seniors.

"If you look on Facebook, we only became friends yesterday," Abby told Select All. "We just added each other on Snapchat. We have all the evidence to prove this is real."

Abby and Reed also told Select All while they don't consider themselves to be dating, they have seen each other "every day-ish" since and made brownies, watched a movie, and even attended a party together. 

You can read the full Select All story about Abby and Reed here and watch the story unfold in a video edited by Lin Nguyen of The Tab below:

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NOW WATCH: Two simple ways to make your Snapchat captions longer


Snapchat's Cinco de Mayo lens turns you into a giant taco

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May 5 is Cinco de Mayo, a day synonymous with margaritas and Mexican food.

Snapchat is letting its more than 100 million users celebrate in a special way: by becoming a taco.

If you open Snapchat on May 5 and tap and hold on your face with the selfie camera, you'll see the option to face swap with a giant taco. The lens is sponsored by Taco Bell, of course.

It looks like this:

taco bell snapchat lens

Snapchat has been consistently using its lens feature to celebrate holidays. It also lets companies like Taco Bell and Gatorade pay to sponsor lenses. Not all of them have been a hit (a Bob Marley lens recently caused uproar after some called it "digital blackface"), but it's hard to imagine that this Taco Bell lens won't be a success.

SEE ALSO: HBO's 'Silicon Valley' nailed a huge question that all tech companies must answer

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NOW WATCH: We tried Taco Bell’s new Quesalupa

A college student declared her love on Snapchat and captivated the whole campus

Snapchat orchestrated a huge dance off at Utah State and helped two students fall in love

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Utah State Snapchat story

The students of Utah State currently have the world's attention, and it's all because of Snapchat.

A live story in the app called "Epic Night: Utah State" includes a fierce debate over the merits of movie spoilers, a huge campus dance-off, and two students meeting and having their first kiss. All of it is orchestrated through Snapchat's crowd-sourced live story feature, which lets Utah State students submit videos in the app for everyone else to see.

The story itself, which will disappear in Snapchat after 24 hours, can be equally confusing and enthralling to watch unfold. Here's everything you need to know:

There's a student at Utah State who has been sharing movie spoilers on the university's Snapchat story for weeks. Snapchat calls her "Spoiler Girl."



Some students don't like hearing her spoilers, so they decide to stage an "intervention" at the campus library.



One student suggests turning the intervention into a "epic silent dance battle" between team spoilers vs. non-spoilers.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A horror movie coming out next month was filmed entirely on Snapchat

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sickhouse andrea russettWith no real surprises to be had with cinema's found footage formula, a gambit of a film being entirely filmed using Snapchat has us intrigued.  

Sickhouse is a horror film from the mind of Hannah Macpherson and is completely comprised of brief Snapchat videos. The story follows a group of friends who go on a trip into the woods to explore the mystery behind the titular building where, we're assuming, isn't the nicest of places.

The film was scripted and shot over five days from 29 April to 3 May, and a trailer is now available to view.

Initially released via actor Andrea Russett's Snapchat account, the footage has since garnered over a million views since itsinduction online. A Director's Cut is now currently being edited with the finished product being billed as a 'made for mobile' film.

The feature-length horror comes from Indigenous Media, a next-gen studio that, in a bid to embrace the changing face of social media, aims to unveil original content across a variety ofplatforms.

Co-founder Jake Avnet toldMashable"We love innovating around story... Snapchat has enormous viewership andengagement, and until now no one had really attempted a true long form story on it so we were eager to take on the challenge.

"Younger audiences are not going to the theaters; they’re not watching TV. They spend their time online watching YouTube, Snapchat, etc. Since this is where these audiences live, why should we try to force them to go elsewhere to watch a movie or show?"

Sickhouse will be available to watch on Vimeo from 1 June.

 

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TECH POWER RANKINGS: The 10 coolest things in tech this week

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tech power rankings illustration

Hello and welcome to Tech Insider's first-ever technology power rankings!

In this weekly feature, you can learn about all the hottest things trending in the world of technology.

Our rankings reflect the constantly changing attitudes towards tech products and services, which are always improving, getting worse, or getting replaced by rivals. 

Here's our inaugural power rankings in tech, for the week of May 1 through May 8.

 

10. This "smart" air conditioner

The Noria air conditioner debuted on Kickstarter last week and it's taken the world by storm . Most people need some kind of cooling system in their home, and the Noria is small, light, attractive, easy to install, and easy to use. There's a reason this project blew past its goal in just a few days thanks to crowdfunding. Check it out.



9. Apple

Despite its dominance in the tech industry, it feels like there's a lull around Apple right now. iPhone sales recently declined for the first time. The iPad and Apple Watch are doing fine sales-wise, but they're not generating much excitement. That's probably why Apple CEO Tim Cook went on CNBC's "Mad Money" this week to talk about future products. He promised Jim Cramer, and by extension the world, that "we have great innovation in the pipeline" and "we are going to give you things that you can't live without, that you just don't even know you need today." Apple will show off some new products and services at WWDC next month, hopefully we'll get a glimpse of what Apple's been working on behind the scenes.

 



8. Amazon

The biggest online retailer has been on a roll lately. Capitalizing on its success with Echo, Amazon released two new Echo products last month, and more recently it introduced a high-end e-reader called the Kindle Oasis. So what if it's crazy expensive? It's really cool! On the software side of things, Amazon last week began offering its massive video catalogue as standalone service you can access for $9 a month a la Netflix. This is good news for Amazon's original shows like "Transparent," but it's also good for Amazon's Prime service, since the new video service should encourage people to instead access Amazon's $99 a year service that includes Amazon Video, plus a ton of other perks.

All of these new products — the new Echos, the new Kindle, and the standalone video service — are designed to encourage people to buy into Amazon Prime, and this smart strategy appears to be working extremely well. Amazon had a stellar earnings report last week, and the company's various businesses, especially related to consumer tech, are looking very strong.

 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and model Miranda Kerr just bought a $12 million house together

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evan spiegel LA house

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is apparently moving on to bigger things in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.

After buying a $3.3 million house there in late 2014, the 25-year-old has now purchased a lavish $12 million pad in the same neighborhood, as TMZ first reported.

He purchased the 7,164-square-foot home with girlfriend Miranda Kerr, a 33-year-old former Victoria's Secret model.

It comes with city views, a pool and pool house, a home gym, and a guest house.

Spiegel bought the house for $500,000 less than the $12.5 million listing price.

SEE ALSO: The $120 million penthouse once owned by the 'King of Wall Street' just became New York City's most expensive home

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Large and lavish, renowned California architect Gerard Colcord designed the house.



It's in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.



There's 7,100 square feet of living space.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

People are casually comparing Snapchat's CEO to Pablo Picasso

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snapchat evan spiegel founder

Recode published an extensive profile of Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel on Monday.

One of the most interesting details though is that the several sources who interviewed for the story casually — and apparently independently — compared him to the great 20th Century experimental painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso:

Admirers say Spiegel is as good at building products as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. And if you think that’s hyperbole, you should talk to several of the sources we spoke to for this story, who casually likened him to Picasso.

As you can probably tell from that quote, the comparison stems less from his skill with a brush or chisel than his ability to create world-changing products. As the author notes, Snapchat evolved in four years from being the butt of sexting jokes to a space for the president of the United States to promote healthcare policy.

Here's Recode's smart take on what sets Spiegel's app design apart from similar products:

Unlike Zuckerberg, Spiegel knows little code. He leaves his impact through vision and design. And that speaks again to what makes Spiegel different. Many of his ideas — most of which are raw and unorthodox — probably wouldn’t pass the smell test at larger companies like Facebook or Google.

When you open the Snapchat app, for example, you land directly in the app’s camera without anything to read or watch. It’s a nudge to create content, not simply consume it. Snapchat was the first to hone in on vertical video, because that’s how people naturally hold their phones. It was counter to the horizontal way video was supposed to be filmed.

And that genius has landed the 25-year-old a billionaire's lifestyle.

As Recode writes, "He owns a Ferrari; he’s a licensed helicopter pilot; his girlfriend is a former Victoria’s Secret model."

You can read the full Recode story here.

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Alfie Deyes now has more viewers on Snapchat than YouTube

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Alfie Deyes

Alfie Deyes, the YouTube star whose "Pointless Blog" videos have 5 million subscribers on YouTube, can get about 16 million views for his Snapchat videos and stories, he told Business Insider today.

Generally, a typical Alfie Deyes video gets between 1 and 2 million views on YouTube, the platform that launched him to online stardom back in 2009. He has 5 million subscribers on YouTube.

Deyes talked with BI on the stage at Engage 2016, the massive social media conference hosted annually in Prague by Socialbakers, the social media management company. He appeared with Dom Smales, the managing director of Deyes' management company, Gleam Futures.

The contrast between Deyes' Snapchat numbers and his YouTube stats show how complicated the world of digital video has suddenly become. YouTube was once the undisputed king of online video. Not anymore. 

In the last few years, Facebook video has been racking up the kind of massive numbers that have made YouTube look more vulnerable. Other platforms — like Twitter, Vine, Periscope, and Instagram — now offer niche uses and features for video, especially if someone wants to broadcast something live, immediate, or short.

At a dinner the night before, Deyes and Smales told us that Snapchat had become a huge platform for Deyes' material. When asked about it today at Engage, Deyes said "So far today I've had like 16 million views."

So is Snapchat now more powerful than YouTube for him?

"I think because it's on their phone, popping up, and it's so instant, just the audience are crazy dedicated. The percentage of audience that I have that will watch every piece of content on Snapchat is so high," he said. Snapchat has that traction because "you have to be there to see it and then it's gone." (Unlike YouTube, Snapchat videos generally only last for 24 hours.) 

We asked him which of the social media platforms he uses are the most powerful, and which are more marginal.

"It depends what I want to do. I see it almost like a puzzle. If you want to watch a long-form video of me, then check out my YouTube stuff. If you want to see what I'm up to right this second follow me on Snapchat. If it's pictures it's Instagram. What I'm thinking is Twitter."

Sixteen million views don't come easy, by the way. Deyes makes 13 videos a week, ranging from 8 minutes to nearly 40 minutes each, after they're edited. That is two videos per day except Saturday, when he takes it easy by only making one.

We'll publish more of our Q&A with Deyes over the next few days.

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How one student came up with a genius way to use Snapchat to land him his dream interview

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Graham Allgood

Graham Allgood had been applying to internships, only to find his emails unreturned or résumé shoved into piles.

That's when he decided to do something different to stand out from the crowd.

He turned to Snapchat and designed his own geofilter to run an advertising campaign to promote himself as a great hire to the employees of Horizon Media, the largest standalone ad agency in the US.

Geofilters on Snapchat target a specific location and can be overlaid over a photo. In Allgood's case, he designed the Horizon name to appear alongside his at the bottom of the screen with a small "Hey Hire Me" square at the top.

It caught the attention of the company and he landed an interview with it for the next day.

"I got the analytics report back the next morning and I had over 1,000 views of the filter," Allgood told Business Insider.

As a junior at California Baptist University, he'd already had experience designing the filters for his school to recruit people to university events. But a February update to Snapchat meant that geofilters could now be designed by anyone and placed over a small area, like Horizon Media's New York Office.

Allgood had also studied Horizon Media's Snapchat account to know that on Tuesdays it tends to post pictures from employees in its office, so he decided that that time window would be his target.

"Knowing that they were a larger company with so many employees, I knew people would see it," Allgood said. "For a small company, it would be kinda risky because some people would see it or maybe they wouldn't."

horizon response

Instead of placing an obnoxious "Hire Me!" with his résumé, Allgood wanted his work and design to speak for itself. He tested it on his own phone using an app called Union that could overlay it on a selfie to make sure the design stood out.

Then he spent about $30 to target Horizon Media on May 3. He interviewed the next day.

Graham Allgood

While it did draw the attention of the company, Allgood was ultimately told that all of the summer internship slots were filled. Still, Allgood thinks that more people will use the targeted geofilters in the future for advertising campaigns, and he's happy that his experiment still landed an interview with the company he'd love to work for.

"I could've run an ad campaign through twitter and they probably wouldn't have noticed," Allgood said. "I think the interactive way to do the marketing for this résumé is the only reason it worked so well."

SEE ALSO: 23 things you had no idea you could do in Snapchat

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NOW WATCH: A college student declared her love on Snapchat and captivated the whole campus

Advertisers love Snapchat's priciest ad format — and that ought to worry its social media rivals

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Snapchat Beats

It's hard to think of many ad formats — particularly online ad formats — that people not only actively engage with, but send to all their friends.

But Snapchat has cracked it.

For Halloween 2015, Twentieth Century Fox became the first marketer to run a Sponsored Lens campaign. Snapchat users taking a video selfie could overlay images of characters from "The Peanuts Movie," while its theme tune played. When users opened their mouths, "an endless stream of candy corn" poured out, Adweek reported.

Snapchat confirmed to Business Insider that it has run more than 50 Sponsored Lenses campaigns in the seven months since launch.

Some 30 million snaps each day are now decorated with Lenses (of all kinds, not just those paid-for by advertisers,) up from the 10 million reported earlier this year.

And the small batch of advertisers that have paid to be among those 30 million decorated snaps can't get enough of them.

Views are through the roof

At a cost ranging between $100,000 up to $750,000 for 24-hour Lenses tied to specific holidays and events, according to several sources familiar with Snapchat's ad pricing, Sponsored Lenses are the most premium ad buy on the app.

It's a premium ad buy for the web too — a 24-hour Promoted Trend on Twitter for example, tends to only cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, those ad buyers said.

Not only that, but it's a very manual process.

There's no other ad unit like it, so advertisers and agencies need to spend time working with Snapchat to make their Lenses happen — they can't just re-purpose their other online ads and make a quick decision to buy. Instead, advertisers and agencies submit their ideas to Snapchat, which goes ahead to create mock-ups of the animations itself in-house,  which then go back to the brands to approve.

But advertisers are pleased with the results so far.

Earlier in May, Taco Bell achieved the record amount of views for this Sponsored Lens:

taco bell snapchat lense 

The Lens was viewed 224 million times and the average Snapchat user played with it for around 24-seconds before sending it on to their friends, Adweek reported.

Gatorade launched an ad to coincide with the Super Bowl earlier this year. It allowed user to dunk a cooler of Gatorade over their heads, honoring the big game's tradition to soak the head coach of the winning team in the soda.

Snapchat gatorade adThe brand holds the record for engagement with a Sponsored Lens. The Super Bowl Lens was interacted with for an average of 30-seconds by each user who sent it on to their friends.

In the UK, confectionery brand Cadbury was so pleased with the success of its Creme Egg Sponsored Lens campaign in March, that it launched a Sponsored Lens for its Crunchie brand this Friday.

Jerry Daykin, global digital partner at Cadbury's agency Carat said: "Lenses drive significant reach of an audience you would struggle to buy on TV. When you get it right, the average time people use [a Lens] can go up to a minute; it's very personal and very energetic."

He added that some influencers, including Zoella, shared the Creme Egg Lens with their followers — adding even more earned media that Cadbury didn't even need to buy.

Jason Stein, founder and CEO of social media agency Laundry Service, has been running third-party research to assess the success of the Snapchat Sponsored Lens campaigns it has launched for its clients.

"We've been testing on things like brand lift and recall and it's been really positive. It's very telling, even amongst an older demographic," Stein said.

Why it works

Both Daykin and Stein agreed the reason Lenses work so well for brands is that they are fun. 

Stein said: "It's funny because you don't think of a goofy taco face as a premium ad buy; you'd probably think of a beautiful HD video. But they're really fun and I don't think you can point to many types of ads and say 'wow, I had a fun time with that ad.' And in having fun, people are becoming brand ambassadors for you, sending it to all their friends with your brand on their face."

The "fun" element may also be the format's biggest hindrance. Creme Egg is a fun, colorful brand — but it might be harder for a bank or a sexy luxury brand to find the perfect Lens.

cream_egg_snapchat_campaignIt's worth bearing in mind that not all of those 50 Sponsored Lenses have managed to go viral — only a few have managed to really pick up. And as more brands start experimenting with Lenses, there's also the question of burnout.

Daykin said: "The disadvantage is that it's harder to tell a specific message. It's more just something fun to do with your brand to raise awareness, and a lot of brands will struggle with that. For us, we're cautious to get too carried away, especially if Snapchat raises prices to the point where it gets questionable. At the moment, it's really exciting, but will they get boring after time after we see a few of them?"

As has been leveled at Snapchat in the past, many marketers will also demand more data from the app — beyond soft metrics like views or engagements — about how Sponsored Lenses actually impact their bottom line.

"They're doing everything right"

Snapchat has made big improvements in this area, working with third-party measurement firms including Nielsen and Millward Brown to provide marketers with metrics including views, reach, completion rate, and brand resonance. 

Those updates seem to be working. Unilever's marketing boss Keith Weed said earlier this month that after a while of experimenting and "failing" with Snapchat, the app has now "come of age." Marketing Week reported that 500,000 views of a campaign for its Cornetto ice cream brand led to "ROI [return on investment] through to sales — we sold more stuff," Weed said.

This summer, Unilever is running a Sponsored Lens across six European markets for its Magnum ice cream brand as part of its "Release the Beast" campaign:

MAGNUM SNAPCHAT

Sponsored Lenses are not likely to be Snapchat's biggest revenue-earner any time soon. At most, there will only be one or two Sponsored Lenses in a market on any given day and the manual way they need to be bought (not to mention pricing) compared to its more-familiar video ad formats and sponsorships will probably mean that won't change any time soon.

But it's exactly the fact that Sponsored Lenses are so different from any other format out there that gives Snapchat a big advantage over its rivals. Snapchat has tried where others have failed to create a mobile ad format that uses the functions of the smartphone and that people actually want to engage with. Users are checking back each day for new Lenses — and it appears they don't discriminate between those that have been sponsored or created solely by Snapchat.

Stein said: "Snapchat has started a big trend in binding the utility of communication with fun in a way I don't think I've seen before. You look at something like telecoms or TV, they never thought how do we infuse fun and not make it cheesy or corny. But this is Snapchat's core ... they're doing everything right."

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is finally learning to love the 'creepy' advertising it once said it hated

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Try this to keep Snapchat from destroying your battery life

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Let's face it: Snapchat is a battery life hog.

Even if you use Snapchat just periodically throughout the day, you'll notice that it's one of the main culprits for draining your phone's battery.

While we can't guarantee that Snapchat won't drain your battery, you can try these two quick steps to alleviate the problem.

Enable Snapchat's "Travel Mode" in your account settings.

From your settings, go to "Manage" under Additional Services and enable Travel Mode. This will reduce Snapchat's data usage and help you save battery life.



Open the Settings app and go General > Background App Refresh, and scroll down to Snapchat. Turning it off will keep Snapchat from updating when it's not open on your screen, which should save a little battery life.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Snapchat is changing how people celebrate major events

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Snapchat paid geofilters

When David Rose was planning how to ask his girlfriend to prom, he thought of Snapchat.

Like most teenagers, the 17-year-old resident of Lakeland, Florida was already a heavy Snapchat user.

"I had recently gotten into Photoshop and had made a [Snapchat] geofilter for my school," he told Tech Insider. With the help of an artist friend, Rose made a filter to announce his prom date in Snapchat, geofenced it to the bakery where he planned to ask her, and paid Snapchat $5 to display it in the app for a few hours. 

After the shop brought out a cake with "PROM?" written on it, Rose and his girlfriend used the geofilter to document the moment and share it on their Snapchat stories. Everything they shared, including the filter Rose paid for, disappeared in the app after 24 hours.

“The whole thing probably took me about 30 minutes to make, "he said. "She loved it."

Not just for businesses

Snapchat on-demand geofilters

For the non-initiated, Snapchat geofilters are location-based graphics that the app's more than 100 million users can place over their photos and videos. These geofilters started out as ways to let other Snapchatters know if you were in a certain city or neighborhood. Then Snapchat started letting brands pay to sponsor geofilters around specific locations and events, like Coachella or New York Fashion Week.

Now Snapchat lets anyone pay to place their own "on-demand" geofilter in the app. They can be set to work around a specific address or up to a few city blocks. They range in price depending on the area and time of day, but they can cost as little as $5.

Creating one for your local bakery costs dramatically less than, say, blanketing Times Square as a company.

The obvious appeal is for businesses looking to promote an event — a potentially lucrative source of revenue for Snapchat. The company told Tech Insider that around 60% of on-demand geofilters are indeed purchased by businesses.

But the remaining 40% includes Snapchatters like Rose who are using their own geofilters to personalize the way they use the app.

A new trend

filter_inside_office

Geofilters aren't just being used for celebratory occasions; they can also serve as a clever way to get noticed.

Take Graham Allgood, a junior in college who created a mini job application with a Snapchat geofilter. He geofenced it around the office of his prospective employer, an ad agency, so that anyone inside would see it whenever they used Snapchat. The creative tactic won him an interview.

"I could’ve run an ad campaign through Twitter and they probably wouldn’t have noticed," Allgood told Business Insider. "I think the interactive way to do the marketing for this resume is the only reason it worked so well."

While savvy Snapchatters like Allgood may already be making custom geofilters, the phenomenon has yet to go mainstream. Snapchat has done little promotion for its on-demand geofilter tool since it launched in February, and for now its existence appears to be spreading organically. People see someone's geofilter in the app and then want to make their own.

For instance, Rebecca Navarre didn't realize that Snapchat let people create custom geofilters until she and a friend recently passed by a stranger's wedding one day and noticed a filter for it in the app. 

“Then we knew it was a thing," she told TI.

Using her knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, the 24-year-old decided to make a geofilter for her friend's engagement party and paid less than $10 for it to appear in the app at the party for a few hours. She said the geofilter was approved by Snapchat in less than a day after it was submitted through the company's website.

“Every picture that was taken that night was in Snapchat," Navarre said. "She was really exited about it.”

Although Navarre has since made a couple of custom geofilters, she said that her friends are still surprised when they them in the app. "People are just realizing it’s a thing you can do," she said.

Regardless of the early novelty factor, Navarre expects to keep making her own Snapchat filters to celebrate special occasions, like weddings and birthday parties. “Every event we have will probably have a filter now."

Screen Shot 2016 05 16 at 10.49.42 AM

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NOW WATCH: A college student declared her love on Snapchat and captivated the whole campus

Snapchat to lease part of Santa Monica Airport, including 8 hangars

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Evan Spiegel - Sun Valley

Snapchat has expanded out of its beloved Venice Beach neighborhood and into an airport.

The Santa Monica City Council approved a $3 million-a-year lease for Snapchat to take over space at the Santa Monica Airport, which includes two buildings and eight hangars, according to the Santa Monica Mirror. Snapchat declined to comment.

The five-year lease gives Snapchat room to expand into the two office buildings, totaling 70,473 square feet, although it has to spend at least $1.4 million in improvements on them.

The deal also includes eight hangars, totaling 8,900 square feet of space. It's unclear if Snapchat actually intends to use them to store aircraft — its CEO, Evan Spiegel, is a helicopter pilot, after all — or whether they will also be converted into office space for the company as it rapidly expands.

Snapchat has been on a real-estate tear recently, snapping up buildings further inland in Venice and now its neighboring Santa Monica Airport. Rather than building a central campus, like you see with Facebook, Google, and Apple, Snapchat's office buildings are sprawling and tucked throughout Venice Beach.

Its first official office was a bright-blue beach house, but the company quickly outgrew it and expanded into a 6,000-square-foot space at 63 Market St. and two more buildings nearby.

In January 2015, it leased an additional 25,000 square feet at the Thornton Lofts. Its latest major land grab came in May 2015, when the messaging app signed a 10-year lease for a 47,000-square-foot office complex in Venice, California.

SEE ALSO: These billion-dollar startups didn't exist 5 years ago

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Snapchat is selling an ice cube tray shaped like a ghost for some reason

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Snapchat doesn't just make one of the hottest messaging apps on earth. It also makes... ice cube trays?

You can buy an official Snapchat ice tray on Amazon right now for $12.99. "Ice cubes are ephemeral — they disappear at warm temperatures," the product description reads.

The yellow silicone tray produces eight ghost-shaped cubes and is "great for cooling down Mar-ghoul-rita's and Boo-jito's," according to Snapchat.

It seems a little bizarre that Snapchat is selling kitchen supplies until you realize that the company also sells a ghost backpack and Snapchat-themed playing cards. It has sold "Ghostface Chillah" plushies as well on Amazon before, but they weren't available for sale at time of publishing.

We asked Snapchat to elaborate on why it's selling an ice cube tray, but the company declined to comment.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A college student declared her love on Snapchat and captivated the whole campus


Snapchat moves to help publishers not on Discover

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Snapchat is reportedly working on introducing a new algorithm that will determine the ranking of new content from brands and media accounts in user feeds, Digiday reports.

Currently, when a user opens up Snapchat and navigates to the Story page — the landing page where Snapchat Discover, Live Stories, and individual account stories live — content from accounts that a user follows — whether friends, media companies, brands, or celebrities — are displayed in a ranking based on which accounts updated their stories most recently.

Now, Snapchat is apparently looking to introduce a different algorithm that will give the company more control over what a user sees first in the feed. While specific details surrounding the upcoming algorithm are largely unknown, many suspect that the algorithm will mimic Facebook's News Feed, where the order of content that appears on the News Feed is based on that user's interests or previous engagement. 

The move could be a welcome move for publishers that are not a part of Snapchat's Discover feature. Discover partners —including Daily Mail, Vox, MTV — have their accounts featured on a Discover landing page that all users are able to access. For reference, Discover is a content portal where partnering publishers have their own "channels" that they post new content to every 24 hours.

But for those publishers that want to reach Snapchat's audience but don't want to invest in creating lots of new Snapchat native content every 24 hours, getting discovered on the platform is harder. Publishers not on Discover have to create their own private accounts and encourage audiences to "follow" these accounts to view content.

Content from these accounts then gets placed into a user's Story feed along with all the other content from every account that user follows. In the current system, if a user follows a lot of accounts and the publisher does not post frequent updates, then its content can be lost in the feed.

A new algorithm based on user preference (the frequency with which a user watches that account's content) would help publishers elevate their content to the top of the feed among engaged viewers. But it's important to note, it could also have the reverse effect. Publishers that are not engaging to their followers would further fall in the feed. 

Every subscriber to the BI Intelligence "Digital Media Briefing" newsletter received this story first thing in the morning, along with other insightful and informative content. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

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How to find Snapchat's hidden dalmatian dog selfie lens

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Snapchat is synonymous with silly selfies thanks to its animated lenses.

One of the most popular lenses turns you into a dog with a playful tongue. Snapchat recently made it so that the lens adds a dalmatian when two faces are in frame.

People love the hidden lense, and it's existence is all because of Kim Kardashian. Here's how to use it:

For the uninitiated, you can apply Snapchat lenses by tapping and holding on your face in the app. There are many to choose from, and Snapchat frequently adds new ones to play with.



The dog filter is popular. It looks like this:



About a week ago, Kim Kardashian made the comment that Snapchat should add "like, a dalmatian or a chihuahua" dog lens.



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Facebook and Snapchat are reaping the benefits of the explosion of mobile video (FB, GOOG, GOOGL)

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Mobile Video Slide Deck

Millennials are spending more time than ever watching short-form video content on their mobile devices, and players like Facebook and Snapchat are reaping the benefits.

These platforms — which capture billions of video views each day — are competing to capture growing mobile audiences and challenge the historical dominance of YouTube. The ensuing bout will create a new set of opportunities for content creators looking to cash in on the mobile video craze.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has developed a slide deck discussing how Facebook and Snapchat are shaking up mobile video.

Today, it can be yours for free. As an added bonus, you will gain immediate access to the team’s exclusive FREE newsletter, BI Intelligence Daily.

To get your copy of this slide deck, simply click here.

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JPMorgan may be taking over your Snapchat feed this weekend — here's why

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You may notice JPMorgan Chase taking over your Snapchat feed this weekend — that is, if you're anywhere near a college campus.

The bank is rolling out a massive campaign to honor college graduates around the country. It's part of a plan to help recruit them as employees.

"You have to reach people where they are, and they're on Snapchat," JPMorgan's chief marketing officer, Kristin Lemkau, said.

"And students in particular are living on Snapchat. It's becoming one of the most powerful platforms for brands."

It's the largest themed ad buy on Snapchat, according to the firm.

Starting Sunday, you'll see JPMorgan ads on Snapchat's "Graduation Live Story" as well as on 80 different campus stories and several Discover channels. They'll run until mid-June.

The idea, according to the firm, is to reach students on a day when they are thinking about their next steps.

The 10-second ads will showcase students' various skills that could be applicable to a job at the bank.

Separately, a geofilter ran on Friday on campuses around the country, reading "Congrats Class of 2016!"

Investment banks are turning to increasingly creative ways to remain attractive career choices for millennial employees.

JPMorgan Snapchat Grad filters

Citigroup, for example, is giving junior staff the opportunity to take a year off and do charitable work while still earning 60% of their pay. A second initiative will let junior bankers spend four weeks in Kenya running a micro-finance project.

The banks are also rewarding top performers by fast-tracking them to promotions and encouraging mobility between departments and cities. In the past six months, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Citi, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have rolled out programs in that vein.

And when it comes to college students, Goldman Sachs in September ran a Snapchat ad campaign as part of a campus-recruiting effort.

JPMorgan also has spent millions of dollars on advertising to attract and retain millennials as customers.

"Advertising is changing very quickly from ads that are interrupting your experience to ones that are permission-based," Lemkau said.

"The user is much more in-control and opting in — think of what Google and Facebook have done — you can select or scroll past if you don't like it. A geofilter is following that permission format."

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NOW WATCH: 2 millennials watched the original ‘Star Wars’ for the first time

Here's why that little blue dot keeps appearing in your Snapchat messages

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Are you wondering what the tiny blue dot means in your Snapchat messages? Or why it sometimes turns into a smiley face emoji for seemingly no reason?

Don't worry. We've got you covered.

Since Snapchat changed its chat interface about a month ago, you may have been wondering what's up with the tiny blue dot that occasionally appears at the end of a conversation.

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It looks like this:



Sometimes a smiley face emoji appears instead of the blue dot.



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